Keith Whitwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I have no real choice but to make a public response to your email.
Thank you.
> I pretty much organized the donation from id while Brian was on
> holidays. I've taken seven months off paid work primarily to work
> on Mesa. As you might guess, after that time, the bank balance was
> looking a little rusty and I was spending more time talking to
> agents & organizing job interviews than looking at Mesa.
> Simultaneously, id tried out mesa 3.1 with my changes and found it
> to be some 38% faster than 3.0. I indicated that there was scope
> for further improvement, but I was unlikely to complete it as I was
> actively looking at returning to 'real' work.
>
> I suggested id employ me for a couple of months, certain nothing
> would come of it. The next morning they wrote back, proposing the
> donation you know about.
In essence you contacted id and proposed that they fund you like a
contractor to do work on Mesa, so the payment you recieve is really
all your own doing. I am more than happy that this is how it
happened, in fact I much prefer this model for paid work be done on
Mesa or other free software projects. This type of funding has no
conflicts, because the recipient actively sought out the funding in
their own right.
In retrospect I think it was a *big* mistake on behalf of id Software
to attempt to cast this in the light of a simple 'donation' to Mesa,
which was arbitrarily given to yourself. Instead they should have
said straight out that they were contracting you to do development on
Mesa. In fact one of the things felt immediately when I read the
announcement, was that it would have been *much* better if id
software simply hired you for X months to do the work you plan to do.
This is in fact exactly what has happened, but it was not clear in
the announcement that this was the case.
> I don't think Brian had a lot of internal conflict in deciding how
> to spend the money. 10k is a useful amount whole, but much less
> than that wouldn't have the desired effect of keeping me out of
> work and in my bedroom working on Mesa.
I had hoped my email did not come across incorrectly, but perhaps it
did. I have absolutely no problem with you getting paid to work on
Mesa by id Software, but rather it was the mechanism used to describe
how this all came about that had me bothered. I understand entirely
the need for you to be paid for your work, and I applaud you for
seeking funding from id to do exactly that.
> I'm a little sorry you chose to word your email as if there was
> some conflict. The point you make about sourceXchange is a good
> one, and John Carmack lamented (in the style of all good
> businessmen) that Mesa, unlike the FSF, did not have charitable
> organization status, and hence the donation was not deductable.
> It's unfortunate you had to phrase your letter with such a divisive
> introduction in order to make a constructive point in the closing
> paragraph.
I think the reason I did that was because the announcement really
*did* have a negative impact on some of the Mesa developers. My
initial reaction was 'Oh now, what kind of bickering will this
start?'. This was followed up by private emails expressing similar
concerns about this, the details of which are no longer necessary.
The moral of this story is that the truth is always the most powerful
weapon. If the original announcement had described what had really
taken place, none of this resenment would have surfaced.
Regards,
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| SciTech Software - Building Truly Plug'n'Play Software! |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| Kendall Bennett | Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
| Director of Engineering | Phone: (530) 894 8400 |
| SciTech Software, Inc. | Fax : (530) 894 9069 |
| 505 Wall Street | ftp : ftp.scitechsoft.com |
| Chico, CA 95928, USA | www : http://www.scitechsoft.com |
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